*Product Life Cycle - Opportunities for Digital and Sustainable Transformation*

#### **Figure 8.**

*Setting of the ViVACE® tool for the "RICIRCOLA – Plastic Waste free" in three scenarios: current situation, experimentation, projection after one year.*

economy, generating a high amount of waste and high level of pollution for the manufacturing of products often characterized by a short life (due to the seasonality of materials and components linked to sudden changes in fashion trends) and difficult to be recovered [47]. Due to its negative environmental impacts, textiles are one of the priority areas of the new EU Circular Economy Action Plan [7]. In particular, some of the environmental issues generated by the textile/footwear sector are related to climate change and large use of non-renewable resources during production, and water pollution and the release of hazardous agents

#### *An Innovative Visualization Tool to Boost and Monitor Circular Economy: An Overview of Its… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98761*

(e.g., microplastics) both in the manufacturing and using phases, problems that become more complex due to the underutilization and the low reuse and recycling rate of fashion products [48]. Moreover, the fashion industry is strongly affected by issues and potential failures related to reputation, above all in the luxury fashion industry of for very famous brands: poor labor conditions, chemical contamination of soil and water, workers' exposure to chemicals, and animal cruelty are some of the main problems perceived as unethical, which can change the external perception of the brand and its products [49].

The transition to a CE can really improve the current fashion sector, addressing both the macro-issues, which are the increase in resource efficiency and the reduction of the negative environmental impacts, and reducing the risk of reputation problems, through a specific feature of this sustainable economic paradigm, which is the traceability of the materials, ensured by digitalization [3, 15, 49]. However, there are some challenging aspects that limit this change.

(i) The fashion value chain is characterized by high fragmentation and the involvement of very different actors. Most of the companies involved in the fashion value chain are SMEs (small-medium enterprises) with an organizational fragility that does not prevent their operations at high-quality levels, but that limits their potential for growth in terms of product development and presence on the market. The figure is reflected in the difficulty of some companies to proactively face up to extremely topical issues, and the lack of digitization of resources which prevents the importance of issues such as waste reduction, chemical risk, transition to renewable energy, changing climate, and ecological handling. (ii) Fashion production, which has always been growing in recent years, has not been accompanied by innovative industrial policies, with a process that has always remained the same over the last decades, limiting the inclusion of innovations based on sustainability and circularity on products and processes [50, 51].

The lack of traceability and transparency in information about resource use determines these aspects [52]. The ViVACE® tool has been proposed to provide a snapshot of the current fashion supply chain, in the footwear district in Emilia-Romagna Region, with the aim to collect quantitative information about sustainability (environmental, economic, and social). The starting point for this application has been the analysis of the footwear assembler, the last manufacturing stage of this supply chain. Unlike previously described applications of the ViVACE® tool, in this case, the method has been implemented not to a single resource (see the P case study) or to products (see applications in plastics sector), but to entire assembling process, considering all the materials and other resources (e.g., energy, waste, water, logistics equipment, and transports) necessary for the final products. The main result of this application is a dashboard, fed by relevant KPIs about the process, able to guide the managers of the single operational units to monitor their performance. The preliminary application of the ViVACE® tool and the evaluation of relevant KPIs highlighted some criticalities and improvement pathways. Some of these have already been implemented in the analyzed company in terms of environmental sustainability, such as actions to improve energy management and reduce the use of hazardous materials. Also, from a social point of view, some actions have been developed, such as the elaboration and publication of an ethic code of conduct shared with all the suppliers. More detailed and quantitative results are not currently provided for confidentiality since the company wants to implement its own communication and dissemination campaign.

The same approach is now being repeated in the district for at least one actor of the supply chain or for more companies according to their expression of interest. In fact, the greatest impact on each pillar of sustainability will be ensured by implementing circular actions at the district/supply chain level.


#### **Table 2.**

*Application fields in which the ViVACE® tool is under development.*

#### **2.4 Other applications under development**

The setting of the ViVACE® tool is under development in the other four applications at a starting phase. **Table 2** summarizes the main characteristics of these application fields.

### **3. Discussion and implications of the approach**

According to the needs evaluated during the development of the new visualization tool, the versatility and capacity to be adapted to every product and industrial sector were fundamental and covered by only a few available tools in the literature. These features for the ViVACE® tool have been deeply demonstrated with the previous applications.

Providing a recognized classification of the analyzed applications is not easy in relation to the already mentioned fragmentation in defining CE and measurement methodologies [25, 53]. However, the authors propose a classification based on literature (both academic and grey literature and standards) that is already active about the proposition of a CE taxonomy with the aim to support the diffusion of circular actions, contributing to providing categories able to facilitate the development and access to finance, credit risk assessment, and transferability and replicability of projects, initiatives and investment across regions. In particular, four documents have been analyzed, integrated, and, when necessary, adapted to select useful proposed categories for the arrangement of the described ViVACE® applications in a framework able to specify its potential and adaptability. The analyzed documents are: one academic paper [54]; a report by the European Commission [53]; and two standards (BS 8001:2017, published; draft of the framework of the Italian project UNI1608856). **Table 3** explains the six categories selected from each reference to be used for ViVACE®.

According to this categorization, the ViVACE® tool applications can be characterized as in **Table 4**.

The main feature that characterizes the ViVACE® tool, which is well explained in **Figure 2**, is the integration of a bottom-up approach, considering what the practical actors of CE (mainly the industrial sector) need to define strategies to


*An Innovative Visualization Tool to Boost and Monitor Circular Economy: An Overview of Its… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98761*

**Table 3.**

*Categories adapted from the literature to describe the ViVACE® tool applications.*

shift to the circular paradigm. In particular, this need is the availability of intuitive and quantitative information. The main novelty and strength of the ViVACE® tool are its capacity to starting from a lower level than the availability of information, which consists of the availability of all necessary data to obtain information. In practice, the ViVACE® tool simply "forces" the users to collect data in a structured and systematized form. The framework of the necessary data has been structured starting from knowing how the companies work (with materials and processes characterized by efficiencies and the use of energy, water, logistics, etc.), and since,


**Table 4.**

*Categorization of the ViVACE® tool applications.*

#### *An Innovative Visualization Tool to Boost and Monitor Circular Economy: An Overview of Its… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98761*

independently from products, processes, and sectors, but also from size, the organizational structure and functions of industries are very similar, the tool can be easily adapted to different contexts. Therefore, this approach results more promising and effective than imposing a set of KPIs to measure circularity (top-down approach), since the lack, inconsistency, low quality, and unreliability of certain data could generate a partial, inconsistent and misleading evaluation of indications, difficult to understand and compare [23, 55].

The further step of this proposed approach, which starts from the bottom level, is to tackle another identified issue, which is the complexity to shift from one scale to another [22]. The micro-scale KPIs are typically based on physical parameters and linked to technological aspects, while high-level indicators, such as socioinstitutional indexes, climate change, and the targets defined by the SDGs, require a combination and integration of a set of KPIs used for the monitoring of CE [55]. Clearly identifying the set of KPIs and the way with which combining them is a challenge, but assessing the macro level is fundamental for the establishment and monitoring of policy coherence and achievement of the targets at regional, national, and international scale. Probably, the use of multi-criteria decisionmaking methods, as tools able to solve complex problems by simultaneously taking into consideration multiple and different criteria, could be the solutions, as already proposed for the definition of circular business strategies in [56] (micro-level application). In particular, the authors are currently working on how to aggregate KPIs used in the described applications of the ViVACE® tool to evaluate their contribution to important international strategies, such as the new EU Circular Economy Action Plan, the Green Deal, and the SGDs.

The main implications of this work are four-fold. (i) Firstly, it describes a comprehensive research method able to overcome the gap identified in shifting from CE theory to practice, which is the lack of clear and consistent approaches to actually assess the circularity and sustainability of products, processes, business models, and strategies. The flexibility and versatility of the proposed tool, as demonstrated by different applications, concerns the systematization of data collection to make data available for the evaluation of useful information and KPIs. Consequently, as demonstrated by this study, the ViVACE® tool is a promising and effective means to activate the evaluation, and widespread use of relevant KPIs collected in literature [19, 22–24]. The applications of the ViVACE® tool also provide a series of quantitative information about the involved sectors and/or initiatives, most of them not still available. Consequently, they can guide researchers in the design and development of improving solutions (products, processes, technologies, etc.). (ii) The second implication of this research involves the industrial managers and other practitioners, such as consultants. According to the purposes showed in **Table 2**, the companies can use the ViVACE® tool to evaluate and monitor useful, intuitive, and quantitative information to improve their processes, products, and businesses, in terms of sustainability, to compare them with competitors and to externally communicate (e.g., to costumers and/or to obtain certifications) their current results, and strategies to advance their situation achieving some targets. (iii) The third implication, applicable at micro level as the previous ones, is linked to providing support for public and private financial bodies. Since the ViVACE® tool is able to measure the potential of different CE actions and scenarios applied to several industrial sectors, it can be used to compare different opportunities to be funded, guiding the decision towards the most sustainable and less risky solutions. (iv) Finally, the ViVACE® tool has the capacity to arrange micro-level information, which, if suitably aggregated, can be used to evaluate the contribution of micro-level CE activities on regional, national and international policies. At macrolevel, institutions and policy-makers could use the tool to simulate the scenarios

potentially prepared by some policies and incentives, to support the consistent and robust design of these tools to boost the transition to an effective CE.
